Excursion on Wednesday, August \'6th. 139 



to depreciate Stonehenge, indeed, it would ill become the Secretary 

 of the Wiltshire Archseological Society to decry one of the grandest 

 antiquities of which the county was so proud : still, it was only right 

 to point out the superior size of Abury, which was much overlooked 

 by archaeologists, and the calling attention to its dimensions did not 

 in reality detract from, or diminish in the least degree, the glory of 

 Stonehenge. Abury was undoubtedly the oldest of th« two monu- 

 ments, it was constructed of enormous blocks of unhewn stone, 

 whereas those of Stonehenge had been dressed with the chisel. The 

 stones of which Abury was formed, as well as the larger stones of 

 Stonehenge, were drawn from the downs about a mile and-a-hal£ 

 distant, but how they were brought, and how they were placed in 

 position by a people who possessed little mechanical knowledge, he- 

 would leave the Member's of the Association to determine. 



The Rev. Bryan King, Vicar of Abury, followed by describing 

 the discoveries of broken sarsens, pottery, and deer's horns which 

 had been made from time to time during the seventeen years of his 

 incumbency, during excavations carried on by the Wiltshire Archseo- 

 logical Society,' and otherwise. As to its purpose. Dr. Fergusson 

 had started the theory that it was a post-Roman work, and a mere 

 burial-place, but in all the excavations not a single human bone had 

 been discovered; but British pottery and red deer's horns, besides 

 the burnt wood and straw which had been used for heating the stones 

 before they were broken up by means of cold water laid on the hot 

 stones, after the manner once in vogue for their destruction. It 

 had long since struck him as a remarkable truth that in the temples, 

 even of heathen people, as in India and Egj'pt, might be seen in- 

 dications that those nations had some conception of the mystery of 

 the Trinity, and here they had the same fact illustrated by the one 

 stone in the centre of one temple and the three stones in the other. 



Mr. PiCTON, F.S.A., considered that the enclosure was a vast 

 amphitheatre, and on a scale of magnitude surpassing even the 

 Colosseum itself. The large flat area was for the performance of 

 spectacles or whatever else was transacted, and the sloping side of 



' See Magazine, voL x., pp. 209 — 216. 



